College Baseball: Carty's relentless pursuit gets him his dream job

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — It would be safe to say life is treating Tom Carty pretty well these days.

He is happily married, has three children, including a 10-week old, and is doing what he has always wanted to do.

Carty is coaching baseball, and he is in charge of one of the top Division II collegiate programs in the country at Georgia College and State University, where he has been as both an assistant and head coach since 2006.

In 2010, Carty’s Bobcats advanced all the way to the NCAA Division II semifinals, eventually finishing as the No. 3 team in the country.

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Carty’s path to this idyllic existence, however, is a journey fraught with more twists and turns than a car with a faulty GPS, more bumps in the road than a trip down Norristown’s Lafayette Street and more emotional ups and downs than a long-running soap opera.

But in the end, the Tom Carty success story is a study in persistence, of a young man who, in his own words, “never strayed from the path.”

The Bishop Kenrick High graduate would never be confused with a big-time prospect in his playing days.

In other words, his name was hardly a major selling point. But his dream was to coach baseball at the highest level available to him.

“I wasn’t the world’s greatest player,” he laughed. “I didn’t play big-time college ball or professional ball.

“I had to go the hard way.”

With that path the only one available, Carty set about pursuing his dream on a crooked road that included early stops at J.P. Mascaro of the Upper Montco American Legion League, Delaware Valley College, Montgomery County Community College and West Chester University.

“Those were the most frustrating times, those days when I was still living in Pennsylvania and working part-time coaching jobs trying to make a living,” Carty remembered. “Those times were lean, to be sure.”

With all of the bad cards Carty seemed to be being dealt in those difficult times, he had a loving ace up his sleeve.

“I was fortunate that my parents have always been supportive,” said Carty, who continued to live at home while making next to nothing in the coaching world. “I worked with Lou (Lombardo) at Montco for three years and it was great. But I was only making $1,200 a year.”

Carty then turned his attention to West Chester.

“I went there to to pursue my master’s degree in History,” he said. “I was there as grad student, but while I was there I walked into (then-West Chester head coach) Jack Hopkins’ door and said, ‘I’m here and I want to coach.’ I was working at baseball academies and doing odd jobs. But I had never lost my desire to do this.”

Carty said this was a time in his life when his former classmates were graduating from college, getting jobs and getting married.

“I’d see some of them and they’d ask me what I was doing,” Carty said. “I told them I was watching baseball on TV because I was recruiting, and they’d think I was so lucky.

“Meanwhile, I was hoping the phone would ring and it was some kids calling me back to give them baseball lessons so I could make $30.”

As much as Carty wanted to stay on his chosen path, as time went on he realized he couldn’t afford to go through life scraping together pocket change pursuing a future that was miles from being certain.

“I had decided that if I wasn’t making a living in baseball by the time I was 30, I would do something else,” Carty said. “I would put my degree to use and teach history, although that was something I really didn’t want to do.”

By then there was also a girl, named Terry, who Carty had met in Steubenville, Ohio, and with whom he was carrying on a long-distance relationship.

“We met about a year before I left Pennsylvania,” Carty said. “I suggested she come to Norristown, which she did.

“But within a year we were moving to Raleigh.”

Carty was off to Raleigh, the site of North Carolina State University, where an old school chum had a hand in delivering him a major career break.

“I always kept up with guys,” Carty said, “and (Bishop Kenrick grads) Tommy Sergio and Scott Lawler had both played at North Carolina State. I spoke to Scott Lawler while I was at West Chester and he knew I was pursuing this career. He had gone back to NC State as a volunteer assistant, and then as the pitching coach.

“He recommended me for the position of director of baseball operations, which is basically someone who administers the things head coaches don’t want to administer, things like travel and camps and things like that.

“All programs have someone like that now, but back then it was a something new.”

Carty was 29, a year away from giving up on his coaching dream, and he had been handed a winning lottery ticket.

“It was a $16,000 a year job with full benefits,” Carty said. “I’d never made that much money in baseball in my life.

“I was working a Penn State baseball camp and Elliott (long-time NC State head coach Elliott Avent) called me. He asked how soon I could get there, and I was packed and left the next day.”

Carty went down Tobacco Road with Terry, and his days of scuffling around for odd baseball coaching jobs were about to come to an end.

“At 29 years old that was the opportunity I was waiting for,” Carty said. “I have Scott Lawler to thank for giving me that break, and it was the one that helped catapult me to where I am today.”

The job did not offer Carty coaching experience, but it did offer a decent paycheck, and a chance to learn.

“I had no responsibilities on game day,” he said, “so I got a chance to watch ACC baseball. And if you’re not learning something watching that level of baseball you’re not paying attention.”

While in Raleigh, Carty was content and Terry had gotten a job as an administrative assistant that was double his own salary.

But it wasn’t to last more than one baseball season.

By the following year Carty had a golden opportunity to become the pitching coach at Division I Marshall University in West Virginia.

“When I was at West Chester,” Carty said, “I had a chance to interview at Harris College in Georgia, which was then a junior college. The coach down there was a guy named Rick Robinson, and he told me the state of Georgia had a lot of great players, but he wasn’t able to get any of them to come to his program.

“His solution was to go outside the state, which is what he did. I remember him telling me that if you want to be a successful baseball coach you either have to be a good pitching coach or a good recruiter. I wanted to be both.”

Carty got the chance to do that at Marshall.

“That program was always looking for more money,” Carty said, “so to get the most out of the budget I had to become a pitching coach and a recruiter.

“My first recruiting class was 18 players, and we recruited nationally.”

As for becoming a pitching coach, Carty, who pitched in high school, learned as he went along.

“To this day I still go to coaching clinics and pick and choose what makes the most sense to me,” he said. “I feel I have a pretty good understanding of all the positions. If tomorrow, I had to coach outfielders I feel I could do it.”

For the first time since his long-ago decision to become a full-time baseball coach, Carty had become one.

The four years he eventually coached at Marshall, Carty said, were wonderful.

“It was awesome,” he said. “It’s a great place to live, my wife finished up her degree there and I loved working with Dave (then-Thundering Herd head coach Dave Piepenbrink). He allowed me to make mistakes. I had so much freedom, and we had a great time.”

Unfortunately, money became an issue within the program.

“With the money the program was allotted, we just couldn’t compete,” Carty said. “And then, the school made the move from the Mid-American Conference to Conference USA.

They did it for football, but the rest of the programs had to play those same teams, too, which meant we were going up against schools like Tulsa, Tulane and East Carolina. And we just couldn’t do it.”

That led Carty to Georgia College, which at that time was being coached by Philadelphia native Chris Calciano.

“We weren’t close, but I knew Chris,” Carty said, “and he had inherited a staff he had to get through one season with, and then he was able to bring in his own people.”

Carty got the job as pitching coach, and he and Terry were on their way to Milledgeville, Ga.

“I got the opportunity to come here, and it worked out well,” Carty said. “There were teaching opportunities here for Terry that she didn’t have in Huntington.”

Carty married Terry upon arrival in Georgia, then experienced instant success in his new job.

“That first year, Chris had a good group,” Carty said. “I can’t take credit for them. We went 53-12 and were No. 1 in the country for nine weeks and came within a week of going to the World Series.”

After a 46-win second season, Calciano got an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

“He got a chance to scout for the Boston Red Sox,” Carty explained, “and to move back home.”

Calciano ran with the opportunity and left in October, and Carty moved in for the season as the Bobcats interim head coach.

“I guess there was a little hesitation from the school,” Carty said of the interim tag. “Here was another guy coming from up north. That whole summer the job was open. That season seemed like it was a little bit of a tryout.”

If that were the case, it was a tryout Carty passed with flying colors. He inherited a team gutted by graduation and went 33-24 and qualified for the conference playoffs. By that summer, the interim tag was gone.

The young man whose lifelong dream was to run his own high-level baseball program had finally seen that dream fulfilled.

“I think I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little motivated by finances,” Carty said. “As head coach I was making $15,000 to $20,000 a year more than I had been. And when you take the path I’d taken, that was a big deal.

“But as for coaching, I felt I was ready.

“We had some success that I felt I had contributed to, so I didn’t feel I had to sell myself to the players. We were going to continue what we had been doing, only I was going to do a few things differently. My feeling was, the program’s always been good, I was just here to try and make it better.”

Which is what Carty has done. Including his two seasons as pitching coach, Carty has guided the Bobcats to a 309-145 record with three Peach Belt Conference championships, five trips to the NCAA Southeast Regional tournament (with one tourney championship) and a trip to the Division II World Series in 2010.

That visit to the World Series, held annually in Cary, N.C., gave Carty the opportunity to call on an old friend and mentor.

“I asked Elliott Avent to come and talk to my team,” Carty said proudly, “and I realized in all his years he had never taken NC State to a College World Series. And he was great. He told everyone just to listen to what TC, that’s what he used to call me, tells you and everything will be OK.”

Now established in his position, Carty still has those around him who don’t quite understand that coaching a college baseball program is a full-time profession.

“I’ll visit the area, and maybe go watch a Presidential-NAA (American Legion) game,” Carty said, “and people will ask me what I’m doing now. I’ll tell them I’m coaching at Marshall or Georgia College, and they’ll say, ‘What else are you doing? Are you teaching classes? Are you cutting the grass?’ And I have to tell them, ‘No, they actually pay me to do this coaching thing all the time.’”

The coaching aspect of the job, Carty said, is really the easiest thing he’s called upon to do. The most rewarding, he said, has been becoming a part of so many young lives.

“Coaching high school or Legion and interacting with young men, 15 to 18, is enjoyable,” he said, “but when you’re coaching young men, 18 to 22, they’re making so many more life decisions, and sometimes they lean on you. And that feels good. The advice you might give them really matters.

“My star center fielder this year was married with twins, another pitcher I had a few years ago was married with a daughter.

“I think they can learn something from me. I didn’t have anything handed to me. I’m just some kid who grew up in a row house on Chain Street. It just so happens one of my attributes, which is not always my best attribute, is that I’m stubborn. That’s what’s put me where I am. I was committed to it. Plus, I was lucky to have great support from my parents. I think young men can learn something about stick-to-it-iveness from me.”

With the season over, Carty is now in recruiting mode, an aspect of the job he said that might be the toughest.

“I remember when Scott Lawler went to NC State, that was a big deal. Now, everyone is getting scouted, scouts are all over.

“Our program is not a hard sell. It’s in a small town, not a big city and the campus is beautiful. But the recruiting is so competitive now, and it always seems it’s about who works the hardest.

“I’m still looking for a player or two for next year’s team. It’s the culture of sport. It’s year round, and down here there’s not a day you can’t go out and see a game. Plus, I have to keep track of my players, most of whom are playing in summer college leagues. It’s great being able to read up on one of your players and see that’s he’s just had a good game or good stretch of games.”

It’s all part of a job that the kid from Chain Street would never stop working to attain.

Fortunately, work is not something Carty has ever been reluctant to do. It’s helped him realize his dream. And he never backed down.

“I never had any doubts I could do what I’m doing today,” he said. “I only had doubts I might not get the opportunity. And now I never plan on changing my occupation.

“When you coach high school or college baseball, you’re dealing with young men who have dreams. Really, you’re in the dream business.